Charles Blow's memoir 'Fire Shut Up in My Bones' was a breathtaking piece of writing.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Mr. Olsen in the fifth grade made me want to be a writer. He said, 'Chuck, you do this really well. And this is much better than setting fires, so keep it up.' That made me a writer.
I think 'Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned' might be a perfect book.
You can tell a more over-the-top incredible story if you use a nonfiction form.
I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.
'Fire and Hemlock' is the reason I'm a writer.
Bonfire of the Vanities: The lesson of that book is, never start believing your own press.
I am exhausted by traditional memoir. I am exhausted by the architecture of the conventional novel.
Robert Mapplethorpe asked me to write our story the day before he died. I had never written a book of nonfiction, and so it took me almost two decades to write that book.
Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.
'Pale Fire' by Vladimir Nabokov was bloody hard work but really thrilling.